


Bella's The Hunger Songfics: 2. Hole - Gutless

by BellaFuckingRockwell



Series: Bella's 10 Songfics for 10 Songs Challenge [2]
Category: David Bowie (Musician), The Hunger (TV 1997)
Genre: F/M, Guns, suicide references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-06 17:21:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20295181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BellaFuckingRockwell/pseuds/BellaFuckingRockwell
Summary: I've done an old exercise that used to rattle around the LiveJournal fic communities. The exercise is that you put your music library on shuffle and you write a fic in a certain fandom based on the first 10 songs that come up. They're usually meant to be drabbles, but I personally don't do drabbles bc I'm a verbose mf so they're just a bunch of short fics instead. My chosen fandom is The Hunger TV show and pairing throughout is Julian/Drew. They're loosely linked but aren't meant to be linear. I've also been pretty liberal with some of them in terms of how much they're actually based on the song!As it's The Hunger, the themes throughout are pretty fucking dark and potentially triggering in places. I'll post separate warnings for each one, but as a rule they're pretty much all NSFW for violence and/or smut (varying degrees of graphic). 18+ only, should go without saying.DISCLAIMER: I own absolutely nothing. The characters and settings do not belong to me. I'm merely a little fish in a big pond trying to amuse myself. Good day Sir.Synopsis: Julian needs help with a particularly disturbing performance piece.





	Bella's The Hunger Songfics: 2. Hole - Gutless

“Shit.”  
As Julian growls at the camera, Drew hovers on the sidelines, trying to remain out of shot until she's called. He's instructed her to scrub up, full surgical overalls and gloves, and she's not sure why the preparation, given it's just the two of them in the room. Her mind wanders, like it always does, just a little; how much does he intend to involve her in this piece? Will it give her nightmares? Will he threaten to demote her from “assistant” to “subject” if she refuses to take part, then make her feel foolish by laughing it off when she makes a beeline for the locked infirmary door?  
Drew chases the ruminations away. She needs to focus; hold her wary gaze on Julian as he throws up his hands, frustrated with himself for not getting his monologue right. She shivers a little; even with her everyday clothes underneath her overalls, it's always freezing in here.   
“Take three.” He glares at the lens, as if it's the camera's fault that he keeps tripping up on his words. Drew's eyes roam the infirmary; the empty gurney, the tattered privacy screens, the surgical trolley covered with a sheet. He's told her nothing about this work. What it involves.   
“Great men,” Julian begins again, addressing the camera in that theatrical voice he always uses for his pieces, “the elite, have a habit of thinking they're God. As an artist, for many years, I was forced to call such men my friends. Put up with their incoherent ramblings. They all thought they were so deep, but it had all been said before. I couldn't stand the cunts.”   
He spits the word, and Drew paws at her hair, alight with nerves. No, this isn't paranoia - something's definitely off today. She can see it in the way his hands shake, his gaze burns, subtle signs he's headed for one of his meltdowns. She wonders whether to intervene. He mustn't work when he's like this. Bad things tend to happen when he does.  
“There was one cunt in particular. One of my contemporaries, I suppose.” Julian hates the word “contemporaries”, and the contempt is palpable in his voice. He's leering at the camera, his gaze intensified by his mismatched pupils. One is permanently dilated from a past “artistic experiment”, many years ago. He won't tell her much about it. She's not sure if she even wants to know.  
Julian continues, “He pulled a very strategical stunt, indeed, my little friend, at least that's how it looked. Shooting his head off right at the height of his fame. I used to think he knew what he was doing, but the more I think about it, the more I think he was just... gutless. Had to go out. Couldn't handle it.”  
Julian steps back, and pulls the sheet off the tray. The usual scalpels and other surgical tools lie there, shining, laid out meticulously in the specific order he likes. But then Drew spots the gun.  
“Julian...”   
She steps forward as he picks it up. He throws a hand out to halt her and she complies, trying to keep her breaths even; wrestles with herself, with the urge to tackle him to the ground and snatch that thing off of him. Whatever she does, she mustn't startle him. Not when he's like this.  
Julian turns back to the camera and presses the muzzle to his temple. “So my question today is, why should that prick have all the fun? Why didn't I get a free Messiah complex with my wretched need to create? Why don't I get to play God too?”  
His voice is rising in volume, unhinged, losing control.   
“Julian, please.” Drew can't help herself, can't mask the hint of panic in her voice. “Please, you're scaring me.”  
He turns to her, his lips taut, his fingers shaking as they encircle the trigger. “If you don't like it,” he says, “then get the fuck out.”  
A click. Drew hears herself scream.  
Then, nothing.  
Julian lowers the unloaded gun back onto the tray. Looks up at Drew, with her bloodless face, her mouth gaping as wide as her eyes; relief, terror, fury, all at once. “Well,” he says, with a shrug. “Looks like I'm gutless, too.”  
Drew's chest burns, her eyes glistening, as she rips the sterile latex gloves off her trembling hands, throwing them to the floor. He hates mess in here, but he's barely noticed; he's laughing, really, truly laughing, and when Julian laughs he looks like a fucking maniac. The camera is still rolling, red light blinking as if mocking her. Was it his intention, to capture this? Record her horror at his wicked games?   
“You're an asshole, Julian,” she spits. She starts to shrug off her apron too, and then her overalls.   
His laughter wanes. “Where do you think you're going? There's work to do.”  
She discards the clothing to the floor, watching it crumple, ball up, satisfied at his little wince. “I don't care. I quit. I'm done.”  
“Alright, then. As you wish.”   
He's smirking, and she fucking despises him for it. Still, Drew does quit at least once a week. She's serious this time, though. She thinks.   
Julian grabs the gun again, jabs it in her direction. “Here. You have a go.”  
She snatches it from him, thinking about throwing it to the floor too; then, as an afterthought, she tucks it under her arm. Julian having access to guns, loaded or not, is not a good idea. “You're a real piece of shit, do you know that?”  
He's laughing again, turning away from her to shut off the camera. “You wouldn't be the first to point it out.”   
Drew's hand tingles with the urge to grab one of the scalpels off the tray and do the job on him herself. He makes no attempt to halt her as she turns to leave the room, and this in itself feels like a further insult.   
The silence stretches around the penitentiary for miles, and at times it's suffocating. One thing you're never deprived of here is the ability to hear yourself think, which is increasingly becoming more curse than blessing. Her mind whirls and rolls like a silent film reel, playing back the previous moments, as she paces down the sprawling corridors back to the safety of her office. Tries to erase the unwelcome, but increasingly present, whisper at the back of her mind: maybe if you let him go through with it, both of you can finally get some peace.  
But this is precisely why Drew never truly quits: if she did, he'd have no one, nothing left. And then there would be nothing stopping him from actually loading that gun.


End file.
